1. Republics

2. The Classical Republican Tradition
Antiquity (Athens and Rome) and its impact
Late Middle Ages and Renaissance in Italy
Early 15th c. Civic Humanism
Monarchy vs. Republic debates from Mid 15th c.
Machiavelli and Guicciardini
17th Century England

3. Key Terms:
Republic
A state in which the supreme power rests in the people and their elected representatives or officers, as opposed to one governed by a king or similar ruler; a commonwealth. Now also applied loosely to a state which claims this designation.
[Francis Bacon (1626); ‘It may be, in civil states, a republic is a better policy than a kingdom’.]
Republicanism
- Republican spirit; attachment or adherence to republican principles; republican government or institutions.

4. State
The body politic as organised for supreme civil rule and government; the political organisation which is the basis of civil government; a body of people occupying a defined territory and organised under a sovereign government.
[Walter Raleigh (1618); ‘State is the frame or set order of a Common-wealth, or of the Governors that rule the same, especially of the chief and Sovereign Governor that commandeth the rest’.]

5. Tyranny
The government of an absolute ruler or tyrant, that is one who seizes upon the sovereign power in a state without legal right; arbitrary or oppressive exercise of power
[Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, part iv, chap. 46. ‘From Aristotles Civill Philosophy, they have learned, to call all manner of Common-wealths but the Popular, (such as was at that time the state of Athens) Tyranny. All Kings they called Tyrants’.]

6. Italy, c.1494

7. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegories of Good and Bad Government and their Effects (1338-40)Siena

8. Effects of Good Government

9. Bad Government

10. Florence 1382-1434 Republican Regime: oligarchy
Medici Regime (unofficially dominated by Medici family)
The restored Republic (Great Council)
The Return of the Medici
The Last Republic
The Medici Principate
From 1532 The Medici Duchy

11. Michelangelo, David (1501-04), Florence

12. Leonardo Bruni, Panegyric to the City of Florence (1403/4)
‘What city, not merely in Italy, but in all the world, is more securely placed within its circle of walls, more proud in its palaces, more bedecked with churches, more beautiful in its architecture, more imposing in its gates, richer in piazzas, happier in its wide streets, greater in its people, more glorious in its citizenry, more inexhaustible in its wealth, more fertile in its fields?’

13. Humanism and Political Theory: first half of 15th century
Humanism in the service of the city state
Civic humanism:
Hans Baron (1955)The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance
Secularization of politics: liberty not salvation
Private to public (common good)
1402 war with Milan: decisive break
liberty vs tyranny

14. Bruni The History of Florence (1442)
‘The Florentine republic is neither completely aristocratic nor completely popular but is a mix of both forms. This can be seen clearly from the fact that the nobility, who are prominent for their numbers and their power, are not permitted to hold office in this city, and this is contrary to aristocratic government. On the other hand those who practise menial trades and members of the lowest proletariat are not admitted to the administration of the republic, and this seems contrary to democracy. Thus, rejecting the extremes, this city accepts men of the middling kind – or rather, it inclines to the well-born and the richer kind of men provided they are not excessively powerful’.

15. Popular features:
‘Since the republic is mixed, we can identify some features as popular, some inclining more towards the power of the few. The popular features are the brief duration of the offices...; short-term offices tend towards equality and are popular, as is our veneration and respect – in word and deed – for liberty, which provides the purpose and object of the whole regime. Also the election of the government by lot and not by vote is a popular feature’.

16. Aristocratic features:
‘On the other hand, many features tend towards aristocracy. It seems to me, for instance, it is aristocratic that everything has to be discussed and approved before being taken before the people; also the fact that the Council of the People can change nothing but must simply approve or reject seems to contribute greatly to the power of the aristocrats.

17. Monarchies vs. Republics: Best forms of government
Mirrors for princes genre
Defense of republics: Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile ( )
Humanists worked on both these genres and some did both:
Bartolomeo Platina, De principe (1470) > De optimo cive (1474)
Francesco Patrizi,
De institutione republicae ( )
De regno et regis institutione (early 1480s)

18. Aurelio Brandolini, De comparatione rei publicae et regni (c. 1490)
Systematic comparison between monarchical and republical forms of government:
Aurelio Brandolini, De comparatione rei publicae et regni (c. 1490)
Kin Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, then Lorenzo de Medici
Which secured liberty, justice and security more effectively?

19. Machiavelli ( )

20. Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (1513-19)
Prince Ch 2 says discussed republics elsewhere
Book I, 1-18: nature of republican institutions
Chapts is where Prince would fit in best
3 books:
Internal affairs of Roman republic
External affairs
Private citizens

21. Ancient texts Livy (59BC-17AD) Ab urbe condita libri
Virtue of Romans, Fortune, glorious past
Polybius ( BC) Histories:
cycle of corruption of states:
monarchy>>>tyranny
aristocracy>>>oligarchy
democracy>>>licence/tyranny

22. Why are republics superior to monarchies?
Prudence, stability of people > than a prince
Longer life than principality
Common good observed in republics
Observe treatises more than princes
> gratitude to city than prince to subjects
More virtu in people than prince

23. Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze (c 1526)
Reform from an aristocratic perspective
Critique of liberty and equality
Venice not Rome as model

24. Blair Worden on English Republicanism:
‘... the movement of intellectual protest which opposed the rise of the Renaissance and Baroque monarchies of early modern Europe, and which, in articulating that opposition, drew extensively on the political writings and the political practices of classical antiquity. This was the republicanism whose vocabulary Niccolo Machiavelli had done more than any other writer of the Renaissance to shape. By 1600 Italian republicanism had lost its vitality.... In the seventeenth century it was in England that Machiavelli’s ideas were most substantially developed and adapted, and that republicanism came once more to life’.

25. 3 Phases of English Republicanism
Interregnum,
Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated (1650)
James Harrington, Oceana (1656)
John Milton The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)
Political crisis of
Henry Nevile, Plato Redivivus (1680)
Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1698)
Constitutional anxieties of 1690s

26. English Commonwealth Currency silver five shillings (1657)

28. Oliver Cromwell between two pillars (1653-1659)

29. Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (28 July 1830), Louvre, Paris